Bonapartists

The Bonapartists were a major faction in French politics during the 19th century, dating from Napoleon Bonaparte's seizure of power in the 1799 Coup of 18 Brumaire to the downfall of Napoleon III of France and the Second French Empire in 1870. The Bonapartists emerged as an anti-elitist, militaristic, and conservative faction of politics during the late 1790s, and Napoleon led his supporters in a counter-revolutionary coup against the revolutionary French government in 1799. The Bonapartists would establish a military dictatorship headed by Napoleon, and Napoleon manipulated the masses to fight for what they saw as a continuation of the French Revolution under the "First French Empire". The Bonapartists were deposed in 1814 by the Legitimists of Louis XVIII of France, and they would not return to power until 1852, when Louis Napoleon proclaimed himself "Napoleon III of France" and created the Second French Empire. Under his rule, France became a military power, but its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 led to a revolution that overthrew Napoleon. Soon, republicanism would replace Bonapartism as the dominant ideology in France.